


Partners

by opalmatrix



Category: Dreamsnake - Vonda N. McIntyre
Genre: Gen, Healing, Illnesses, Misses Clause Challenge, Parent-Child Relationship, avocation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 09:02:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5534030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/pseuds/opalmatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Snake falls ill, she discovers that her daughter is no longer a young child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Partners

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).



> Happy Yule, my friend! Beta by [**lawless523**](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lawless/pseuds/lawless).

There was a narrow stone passageway. No, it was a mere crevice. The space got more and more narrow, until she had to choose between turning back and grinding the flesh from her shoulders and hips. She could not turn back. Someone—something?—would die if she did. Mist? Sand? Grass…again? Or Tendril, who was only just becoming truly friendly?

The pain in her shoulder was nauseating. The air was hot and close. There was no water to drink, to wash, and she was filthy in the worst possible way…

Snake opened her eyes. She was in a dark, close space, and it was hot, but not as dark, as close, or as hot as where she had just been. She was lying on her side, and the shoulder she was lying on was sore. The faint blue glow of a bioluminescent lamp showed her Melissa, reading a book. Snake tried to speak, but all that came from her mouth was a parched groan. Melissa put the book down at once. "Snake?"

"Water." The words were hardly more than a breath, but her daughter understood. She rose and came to Snake's side with a water bottle. Snake tried to reach for it, but she could barely move her arm. Melissa knelt by her side and eased one arm carefully under Snake's shoulders, raising her and holding the bottle to her cracked lips with the other hand.

Snake gulped water automatically, her mind casting aimlessly back and forth. Why was she so weak? Where were they? For a moment she even misremembered Melissa's age and wondered how her small daughter was able to lift her so easily. Then, as her body absorbed the water, sense returned. Melissa was not twelve but fifteen, as tall as Snake, and her strength had grown proportionally. The arms that could drag a recalcitrant horse to a mounting block could easily lift her own mother. They were on another desert expedition, bringing vaccines and medicines to yet another remote village. But what had happened? Snake could not remember much between their arrival and the nightmare from which she had just awakened.

"You're crying," said Melissa, worried.

"It was a dream," Snake whispered. At least she could now hear her own voice, even if it was feeble. "What happened to me?"

"You've been sick for five days," said Melissa. "I think maybe it was…."

"Yes?"

"I think it was that grain of theirs."

The grain! Pieces of memory shifted and now started to reassemble into sense. The villagers had bred a hybrid grain that grew with very little water in the poor desert soil. They were proud of their work and wanted Snake to take samples back to the healers' headquarters for analysis. There had been a huge dinner—no, a feast, as in an old legend. There had been bread made from the ground grain, and a huge platter of hulled grain boiled in broth and butter, studded with bits of quail and whole little eggs.

"Why didn't you get sick?" she asked.

Melissa took away the empty water bottle and lowered Snake gently back onto her bedroll. She smoothed Snake's hair back from her face. "I didn't like that stuff," she said. "It tasted funny."

"But healers…."

"Can't be poisoned. I know. But in class last winter, Tiqi was telling us about how some people can digest certain proteins that others can't. And I'm wondering: maybe this grain is so different that most people won't be able to eat it. They were talking about how long it's taken to develop it."

"Generations," Snake said. "I remember."

"And the earlier generations of the grain didn't yield as well. So it's been changing a little at a time, for years and years. And maybe the people have grown used to it, or maybe the ones who couldn't eat it got sick and died out a long time ago."

"It makes sense," said Snake. "We have those samples. Tiqi can analyze them when we get back."

"Yeah," said Melissa. "but they aren't going to be real happy if it turns out that their magic grain kills people."

"But I'm OK."

"That's not true! You almost died, Snake! You were throwing up, and you had the runs, and you were bleeding from inside!" She flung herself down next to Snake and buried her face against her mother's side. Snake ran her fingers through her daughter's thick, curly hair, wrapping tendrils of it around her fingers, watching the scars disappear and reappear beneath the strands. The blue light dimmed the vibrant color, but Snake saw it in her mind's eye as it was, vividly red and alive.

"But I'm going to be OK," she said, and her voice sounded stronger now. "And they know it was the grain that made me sick. Don't they?"

Melissa raised herself on one elbow. Her face was flushed around her scars, but she didn't seem to have been crying. "No one's sure. Some of them don't want to think of it: they think you just caught something. That's why we're in this tent, away from the houses. But I think most of them know. I haven't been letting you have any. They have some rice: they import it for some of their old family recipes. I've been feeding you a little porridge made from that, with sugar in it, when you were able to eat at all."

Snake frowned. "That must be expensive. Are they letting us eat the rice because they feel guilty?"

"No: I had them pay me in rice."

"Pay you! For what?"

"Yesterday evening, when you managed to keep down some water and porridge and were resting, one of their prize milk cows was having trouble giving birth." Melissa sat all the way up, her face lightening and opening up as she spoke.

_Cows_ Snake almost said, but then another memory surfaced: lean, rangy cattle, with humps over their shoulders, tawny and long-horned, with darker legs, tails, and noses, well-adapted to life on short rations and little water.

"She was having twins. The second one was all turned around. I got the calf's position all changed: reached right up in her and moved the baby around. And then the calf started coming out almost by herself, except the momma was too tired, so I helped her. They said if I had been a villager, they'd have given me the second calf when it was weaned. I said I'd take my pay in food I knew we could eat instead."

Her voice was proud and confident. Snake had to smile. "When did you learn how to do that?"

"A year ago, while you were away in Mountainside. I studied with Checo, working with the horses and cows. But I never worked with a cow that was having twins! That was new." 

"You liked doing that," Snake guessed.

Melissa nodded, "It was like the cow came back to life. She was happy and wanted to wash the calves right away. And this morning she was walking around and they could both nurse from her."

"Maybe you should do that, then."

"Do…?"

"Animals are important. You've been wondering about whether you really want to be a healer. But we need animal healers too. The loss of a cow would be a problem for a poor community."

Melissa looked surprised. Then she grinned. "I think I could do that! Yeah, I would like it."

"Meanwhile, you've got to put up with being a mother healer for a while more. I need to pee. And I'm actually hungry. And I stink."

"You don't stink," said Melissa, gruffly. "You just smell like yourself, only more than usual. There's a piss-pot here, and then I'll get you some fresh clothes and some food when I go empty it."

Snake submitted again to her daughter's strong arms. Melissa raised her up with only a little grunt of effort. Her daughter was strong, and clever. Three years ago, Snake had said to her "We're a partnership." And Melissa was proving that more and more each day. Despite the lingering weakness and discomforts of her illness, Snake found herself content and protected in a way that she never had been before.

 


End file.
